I understand that - see the part I quoted about “i.e., forcing me to pay for it, even if I don’t eat it”. Asking for something to be omitted is one thing- expecting a discount for it is quite another.
I understand that - see the part I quoted about “i.e., forcing me to pay for it, even if I don’t eat it”. Asking for something to be omitted is one thing- expecting a discount for it is quite another.
Maybe we should add this to the list of “ways in which service expectations vary by location”. One of the reasons my group became such big customers with a certain fast food place in Ireland was that they’d let us remove items from their more complex burgers (we still paid the same): none of us had encountered that possibility before. But in most cases I’d find substitutions pretty absurd: what, spaghetti bolognese isn’t good enough, it’s got to be penne bolognese? They may not even have penne!
You left off the part where a supposedly professional chef working in a supposedly professional kitchen cooks the food. That is the point at which a reasonable level of customization should be available to the paying customer.
Go to a deli at 9am, order an egg sandwich, and you have some customization available:
Size - 1, 2 or 3 eggs
Egg - Fried hard, over easy, sunny side, scrambled
Bread - roll, bagel, long roll, toast (white, rye, wheat)
Cheese - none, american, provolone
Meat - none, bacon, sausage, ham, Taylor ham (here in NJ)
Seasonings - none, salt, pepper
Sauces - none, ketchup, hot sauce, mayonnaise, mustard, russian dressing
All for 1 stinking little sandwich, and a well run deli will happily make any of these sandwiches without complaining that you aren’t selecting from one of their pre-determined egg sandwich styles.
They can manage this at a price of $3-5 because they have a process to manage it. A restaurant that is unable to manage customization is not well run, customers do not necessarily want to eat exactly the meal you designed*, so you should have the ability to cook and serve meals that your customers want to eat. If baked potatoes are more expensive than french fries, then empower someone to say “Yes, we can substitute, but it is $1 more.”
*exceptions can be made here for restaurants where the purpose is to eat exactly what the head chef designs. This is not the raison d’etre of most eateries.
That is the best of both worlds, but it does open the door to a customer going “Oh, I didn’t see that it cost more, I shouldn’t have to pay” or “well, if you can substitute X for Y, you should be able to substitute Z for Y”.
Allowing a sub with a cost increase would be nice, but I can understand why some restaurants don’t want the hassle.
The “I’m a paying customer” mentality is getting out of control.
Please tell me you did not honestly try to negotiate a discount on your salad because you asked them to leave the dressing off?
They can do this because a deli is an assembly line, not a kitchen.
And when the level of customization is available, it is featured on the menu in the form of clearly listed choices and options. If it isn’t on the menu, it isn’t available.
I’m wondering what other businesses people expect substitutions from? You can always ask, but what is there to get up in arms about if the grocery store offers sale on a 2 liter bottle of soda and you want the same discount on a 1 liter bottle? What if I wanted the keyed lockset from the hardware store but wanted a different deadbolt, should I expect them to substitute a deadbolt of greater value for the same price? If I go to get a haircut and say I don’t need a shampoo because I just washed my hair should I expect a discount? How about a car dealership where I ask for some different rims at the same price?
You can always ask, but I don’t understand anger at being turned down for asking for a special service or product. If you don’t like the choices at a restaurant, or any other business, go somewhere else.
Imagine you go to a Barber and he has pictures of hair styles in a chart. You say, can you make the top like Pic#3 and the back like Pic #5, and he points at the bottom of the chart where it says"no substitutions."
The service industry encompasses a wide range of offerings, some of which require the ability to customize, and some which do not. When you’re talking about something as personal as a haircut, or food to eat, it makes sense to offer a degree of customization. Other services, like phone service, it doesn’t make sense to offer customization, you have a menu of available services, and customers pick from that.
Perhaps these people should try going to restaurants that serve food they do want to eat, rather than throwing a dart at Yelp and then trying to convert the menu into something they like.
I know you don’t see it as such, but for some restaurants, this IS the case. Some certain resaurants do aspire to be the kind of place where you can go customize whatever you want, and they are very up front about it.
To use your barber analogy, imagine that the barber can only perform the “back of Pic #5” a finite amount of times per day, and he is going to use them all for the people who order #5.
I may not return to a restaurant that had “No Substitutions” but not because I think they are being rude or in any way unreasonable, or that restaurants have an inherent responsibility to allow substitutions. but because I like having options. But there is many different ways to run a restaurant, and given the prevalence of “No substitutions” it seems this is hardly a restaurant killing policy.
Exactly. If that’s the restaurant’s business model, and it works for them, what’s the problem? Go to a restaurant that gives you what you want. Maybe their business model is saving them time and money; maybe it’s losing them customers. If they’re a good business, they know and they choose to do what they do and how they want to do it.
It has been my experience that the more a business tries to be all things to all people the less focused they are on their actual core product. My car example was a case in point and this was brought up in business classes when I was in school. Ford would make a car where everything on it was an option. When you start doing the math it’s easy to see where efficiency is lost in production. Each Ford car would consist of thousands of permutations that had to be addressed on the assembly line. Honda would have a small number of group options that people wanted and would do them in mass batches. This is now the norm for all cars. You’ll have a handful of group options followed by color choices.
You will have no argument from me. Too many options, for me, is often a bad sign, unless it’s some up-market, custom-built sort of thing.
Ludovic:
Is this why Burger King made a point of “Having it your way” in one of their better-known ad campaigns?
(I’ve never patronized McDonalds, so I didn’t have this first-hand knowledge.)
I’m allowed to think that someone’s business model sucks.
I get that unlimited substitution is restaurant based anarchy, and there needs to be some structure behind your menu. However, handwringing over serving a baked potato instead of french fries just boggles the mind.
If I’m eating at a dive or a chain, I’ll get substitutions. I always offer to pay extra up front.
But if I’m eating somewhere high end, where the entrees are $20 or more, I would not deign to tell the chef how to prepare his food. I am willing to pay to try it the way it’s intended to be. That’s the point of going.
I thought other posters gave a reasonable explanation why a restaurant might have trouble sustituting a baked potato for fries:
IMHO, it’s not unreasonable to ask to substitute a baked potato for fries, but it is unreasonable to insist.
Unless I missed it, no one yet in this thread has offered a specific example of a situation where a specific restaurant has a “no substitutions” policy. As long as it’s purely hypothetical, we can’t say whether such a policy is reasonable or not.